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Archive for June, 2011

Stuffing our face at La Taverna

Posted in Uncategorized on June 11, 2011| 6 Comments »

4-1. Who saw that coming? Derry City went crashing out of the FAI Cup, and the crowd sang ‘Wallace For Taoiseach’. Love Mick Wallace or hate him, everything he does is interesting. From decking a football team out in pink to ending up in the Dail, he’s what many would refer to as ‘some character’, you could say.

I’ve never ate in Wallace’s Tavern, La Taverna, but I pass it almost every day. I’ve always just imagined that it’s expensive. The ‘Italian Quarter’ even sounds pricey, doesn’t it?

I don’t eat out enough in Dublin. In a city where nobody thinks twice of handing over a fiver for a pint glass of booze, value for money is something we can only really pretend to be passionate about. A mate suggests we drop into Mick’s as we’ve something to chat about and need a venue. It beats the pub.


“He’s nearly bankrupt isn’t he?”. Jesus, I’d hope not. If it endangers this place anyway. Living next to an Apache Pizza I’ve been eating what I thought was pizza for years. It wasn’t. It was pure crap. This is pizza. It’s huge, its piping hot, it’s covered in Italian sausage and it’s got a glass of red wine beside it.

A glass of red and a very sizeable pizza comes in at €10 on the lunch menu, which is hard to fault. We were in at 3:30 and the place was very quiet, but as my mam says of the recession “where isn’t?” There was no rush to get us out the door (how annoying is that in any environment?) and we were left to chat away, happy as larry.

Ray, you have a challenger, a scruffy hairy one by the name of Mick. While I love Ray’s, maybe this northside contender will become a frequent spot to drop in on.

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G’wan the Brian Boru.

Posted in Uncategorized on June 10, 2011| 3 Comments »

Great stuff from The Brian Boru over in Phibsboro, love it. Thanks to James.R for bringing it to my attention via Facebook.

The Brian Boru in Phibsboro is actually a great spot, my pub of choice before the saints ever take on Bohs up the road in Dalymount. This one is from April. “Buffit. Or Buffet as they say over on the southside”

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Manchester Calling 2: Wolfe Tone, the YCL and a hot summer in London

Posted in Miscellaneous on June 8, 2011| 2 Comments »

Jay Carax will be in Manchester for the next two months but he’s hoping to post irregularly on Dublin and Irish related topics.

Found this today while helping to catalogue some of the Young Communist League papers.

Connolly Association (1976). Scanned by Jay Carax.

The next file was a letter from the Young Communist League (YCL) to the Connolly Association asking them why Ken Brinson was down to speak as he hadn’t been asked! I’m not sure if the problem was resolved.

The other intended speakers were Ken Maloney (Connolly Youth Movement, Dublin), C. Desmond Greaves (Editor, Irish Democrat) and Brian Nicholson (T. & G. W. U.)

I can’t find anymore information online about Ken Brinson or Ken Maloney. Though I was saddened to find out that Brian Nicholson might have been a M15 informant at some point.

[Funny to think that in the backdrop of this march and others like it, punk was rearing its head across the city during the hottest summer in the UK since records began]

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Branching out beyond the black stuff.

Posted in Pub Crawls, Pubs on June 8, 2011| 9 Comments »

Ah Guinness. Daniel O’Connell might not have been the firms biggest fan, with the famous Guinness boycott of the 1841 Repeal election always forgotten today in the romantic narrative of the company’s history, but we here at Come Here To Me are certainly fond of the great “Protestant porter”.

You’d want to be but. Being honest about it, it’s not like you’ve a whole lot of options beyond it. Indeed, to borrow and rework a great quote from history, the Irish punter can have a drink in any colour that they like as long as it’s black. If they don’t want it black, they can have a pint of Budweiser.

The lack of selection in Irish pubs is pretty miserable. Even Witherspoons, the McDonalds of the British pub world, offer a wide selection of beers both local and national throughout their outlets. Here at home though, it seems Diageo have everyone by the bollocks. With that in mind, I’ve been trying some new things lately.

I have to say, I feel like a vegetarian who just tasted his first donor kebab. It really is that good. Here are three favourites so far:

1: Plain, The Porterhouse.

Plain, Temple Bar.

Walking into The Porterhouse, I was taken aback by the image of Flann O’Brien by the door. The check of them, I thought. O’Brien was more often (or too often) to be found down the far end of Temple Bar of course, in The Palace. Still, when you taste their inhouse stout, you understand the choice of image in the doorway perfectly. A pint of plain truly is your only man.

Plain is an All-Ireland champion stout, and deservedly so. Indeed, she’s the Global Gold Medal winner of Best Stout in the World.The rich, roasted malts make this one, and she just goes to show the Corkonians that once again the best stout in the world claims Dublin as home.

2: Spitfire,Kentish Ale.

The Spitfire beer bottle looks like somebody gave a Glasgow Rangers Supporters Club a bootleg copy of Photoshop and asked them to design a bottle of beer. ‘THE BOTTLE OF BRITAIN’ it proclaims, and the whole thing is a red,white and blue designers nightmare. The bottlecap is a beaut, taking in the classic RAF logo which was later adopted by the mod youth subculture in Britain.

Have you seen the ads? No? Jesus……

The stuff is absolutely beautiful but. A 4.5% ale, it’s got a gorgeous hoppy, bitter taste to it. We found it in O’Neills on Sufolk Street retailing at a very fair €4 a bottle. They gave us a glass of ice with it, which I thought was very odd and didn’t work with the beer.

Spitfire is currently on sale in Aldi of all places at a knockdown price.

3: Galway Hooker

I’ve great time for any pub which is willing to move beyond the old predictables, and I was surprised to see the Galway Hooker van parked outside The Palace on Fleet Street. This has long been a favourite, and was probably my first trek of the beaten track with alcohol. Galway Hooker has been very successful in its home city, making the great leap into a student bar, which says a lot when student bars are more often associated with cans of Dutch Gold under a table than pint glasses on it. There’s a great bitterness to this one, and it is quite widely available by the standards of smaller microbrewery drinks in this country.

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‘The Fall Of Dublin’ – Liz Gillis.

Posted in Uncategorized on June 8, 2011| 3 Comments »

I’ve been loving the new Mercier Press series on the Military History of the civil war. For too long the period wasn’t given the academic attention deserved, but Mercier’s series has been a very welcome addition to the historiography of the civil war. The first two works both looked at the conflict in Munster, with Tom Doyle looking at Kerry and Pádraig Óg Ó Ruairc taking on the battle for Limerick. Now, it’s a Dublin historians turn and Liz Gillis takes on the fall of the capital.

I was impressed by a presentation Liz was involved with at the Military History Society of Ireland conference on the War of Independence in late 2009 which looked at the burning of the Custom House, and knew of her work as a historian based at Kilmainham Gaol. She’s made good use of some unusual archives and sources here, and at 128 pages, the main body of research is incredibly readable.

The work is written chronologically, with the crucial days of fighting receiving chapters to themselves. Great praise is due to the folks at Mercier Press for turning the focus onto this great, complex and often still heatedly debated chapter of our history.

Liz will be giving a free walking tour of the Liberties as part of this years Liberties Festival on June 15.

Those interested in the civil war may enjoy this brief piece here recently on the unusual plaque to Cathal Brugha above a Burger King on O’Connell Street!

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The maddest leaflet ever handed out at the GPO….

Posted in Miscellaneous on June 7, 2011| 9 Comments »

….is probably this one. Cheers to O. for passing this on to Come Here To Me. It’s a pretty mental leaflet on how the GPO has been “debased” by “foreign elements” outside it, “promoting alien ideologies that are totally contrary to that which our courageous and self-sacrificing patriots fought and died for”.

The country has also apparently been corrupted by “liberalism, weakness and cowardice”. In the interest of not giving the air of publicity to the clowns behind this one, I’ve blacked out the URL.

In a country where everyone claims to be able to speak for the dead, this is a particular lowlight of recent times. Don’t think a historian put it together either.

(more…)

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Forbidden Fruit finally rolls around.

Posted in Events on June 2, 2011| 4 Comments »

I’m excited for the Forbidden Fruit festival at the weekend. It felt like it would never roll around, and likewise it was hard to get excited about a music festival in the Royal Hospital grounds when May was wet, cold and miserable. June is a different kettle of fish.

Running Order

I’ll make all of Saturday and the later-half of Sunday, with the last college nonsense and work before hand. The conclusion is the real highlight.

Not being fifteen, and not even really having a local field to drink in, I’ve never been too mad on Bulmers who sponser the event. Thankfully, Becks is on offer too over the weekend. Now the important business is out of the way, the music.

For me, the second day is much stronger than the first one. Saying that, perhaps the highlight of the festival is Yo La Tengo late on Saturday.

The second day sees something I really feared but was quite inevitable, in the form of a much feared clash. Between Battles and Jamie XX, I have to say I lean to the later owing to having seen Battles before and also being very much addicted to Jamie XX’s latest effort. It’ll be dancing central of course.

Aphex Twin really is a great way to bring it all to an end. A younger me will nevere forgive them for this music video though.

I’ve been to the Royal Hospital for a concert before, in the form of the master Leonard Cohen. I expect a very different crowd. Less likely to spot Bertie Ahern too. If you’re going, enjoy it and give us a wave.

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Manchester Calling 1: Manchester Town Hall

Posted in Miscellaneous on June 2, 2011| 2 Comments »

Jay Carax will be in Manchester for the next two months but he’s hoping to post irregularly on Dublin and Irish related topics.

Manchester Town Hall - Wikipedia.

The Manchester Town Hall is one of the most impressive buildings in the city, both for its interior and exterior. Completed in 1877, it is a Victorian-era, Neo-gothic municipal building. The building functions as the ceremonial headquarters of Manchester City Council and houses a number of local government departments.

It’s Great Hall is a sight to behold.

The Great Hall. Picture credit: Patrick mcr.

The walls are particularly famous for its series of twelve paintings by Ford Madox Brown on the history of the city.

But the ceiling caught my eye as well. Various cities and countries from all over Britain and the world are represented by their coat of arms. In the right hand corner, above Liverpool, was Dublin fair city.

Celing, Great Hall, Manchester Town Hall. Picture credit - Jay Carax

Celing, Great Hall, Manchester Town Hall. Picture credit - Jay Carax

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